Turkey to resume NATO negotiations with Sweden and Finland next month

Ryan King

February 27, 10:17 AM February 27, 10:18 AM

Turkey will reconvene talks with Sweden and Finland on March 9 as Ankara continues to hamper their attempts to join NATO.

Last month, Turkey scrapped talks with the two countries after a Danish politician burned a copy of the Quran outside of a Turkish Embassy. Turkey's blocking of Sweden and Finland from joining NATO has created problems in Ankara's relations with other members of the powerful military alliance.

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"My colleagues will attend the meeting that will be held on March 9," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu revealed during a news conference, per Reuters.

The meeting will take place in Brussels. After Russia's brutal invasion of neighboring Ukraine last year, both Sweden and Finland applied for membership in the NATO alliance, noting that the Kremlin has not attacked NATO members. However, Turkey and Hungary blocked their applications, grinding the process to a halt as the group makes key decisions by consensus.

Top of mind for Turkey is both countries' policies toward the Kurds. Turkey considers its domestic Kurdistan Workers' Party a terrorist organization and has been rankled by Western support for Kurdish groups in the Middle East.

Both countries have denied repatriation requests from Turkey for people with ties to the Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen or the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which has led to Ankara accusing them of harboring terrorists.

Following a string of negotiations between the two sides, Turkey has begun to signal it is warming up to Finland joining the alliance, but it has remained unsatisfied with Sweden. The three countries signed a memorandum at a NATO summit in Madrid last year, outlining steps toward Turkish ratification.

"Unfortunately, we have not seen satisfactory steps from Sweden on the implementation of the Madrid memorandum," Turkey's foreign minister added, per Reuters. "It is not possible for us to say 'yes' to Sweden's NATO bid before we see these steps."

Sweden is now mulling legislation aimed at appealing to Turkey's requests to make it illegal to join or endorse a terrorist organization, but there has not been a timeline set for the legislation to pass.

The United States and other NATO allies have backed both Sweden and Finland's attempted entrance into NATO. Hungary is the only other alliance member to stand in the way aside from Turkey, but the country is believed to have plans to hold a vote to ratify the two countries' applications in late March.

NATO is set to hold a summit on July 11 in Lithuania's capital, Vilnius.

Christmas celebrations: Five cultures with unique holiday traditions

Misty Severi

December 25, 05:30 AM December 25, 05:31 AM

Christmastime has come around again, and many cultures and countries celebrate one of the most beloved holidays with their own set of traditions.

From a giant straw goat to "Christmas Tree Jenga," here's a closer look at five of the most interesting ways that countries bask in the good tidings associated with Christmas.

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Christmas games played in Australia

People never witness a white Christmas in Australia because the holiday is considered a summer holiday, and many surfers will catch a wave in a Santa hat. Since the holiday is in the summer, Australia has a unique way of celebrating Christmas. Holiday-themed games are a hallmark of the season for children and families, with games such as "decorate a Christmas hat parade" in which children decorate their Santa hats and parade them in front of family and friends.

Another game includes "Christmas Tree Jenga" as families set up a game of Jenga in the shape of a Christmas tree. Some families will even use paper cups instead of wooden blocks.

Thirteen Yule lads in Iceland

Iceland celebrates Christmas over 26 days, stretching from Dec. 11 to Jan. 6. However, the heart of the Christmas season starts on the 11th, when children place their shoes near their window every night before Christmas Eve. Each night, a different boy in the 13 Yule Lads Christmas folklore will drop either rotten potatoes or little pieces of candy into each child's shoes, depending on whether they were good or bad that year, according to the Guide to Iceland.

A Martinique feast and sing-along

In the French Caribbean island of Martinique, music is an important part of the Christmas holidays. Families and neighbors often gather together to sing Christmas songs in both French and Creole and feast on holiday food, such as yams, boudin creole, pates sales, and pork stew. They also find gifts under their local Christmas trees called the filao.

Four months of Christmas in the Philippines

The Philippines have the longest celebration of the Christmas season, spanning four months. The Christmas holiday stretches across the months that end in "ber," meaning September, October, November, and December, and culminates on the first Sunday of January during a feast called the "Feast of the Three Kings."

One tradition is creating a "parol," which is a lantern made out of bamboo and cloth that is used to light the paths leading Filipinos to churches for prayer and worship. Parols are also hung up in houses for the holiday. Another tradition is Simbang Gabi, a nine-day ceremony that takes place from Dec. 16 to Dec. 24 in which families get up as early as 4 a.m. to go to Mass, according to the Philippine travel website Kapwa Travel.

Tradition has it that if someone completes the entire nine-day cycle of Masses, his or her Christmas wish will come true.

The giant Yule goat of Sweden

The creation of the Gavle Goat is a famous Swedish Christmas tradition. But perhaps even more famous is how people attempt to burn the gigantic straw goat down. Arsonists have succeeded 28 times despite the act being a crime.

Every year since 1966, the town of Gavle has created a massive straw statue of a Yule goat, which is a common theme for Christmas in Sweden. Tourists from all around the world have flocked to see the giant statue in person each year. The statue this year stands at 42 feet and only needs to survive a while longer before it will be taken down on Jan. 6. Last year, the statue was burned down on Dec. 17, just one week before Christmas.

International fans can root for the Yule goat by following him on social media or through a live camera here.

NATO formally invitations Finland and Sweden to be a part of alliance

Mike Brest

June 29, 11:26 AM June 29, 11:27 AM

The NATO alliance formally prolonged invites to Sweden and Finland to sign up for the alliance on Wednesday, a historic enlargement for the allies.

Turkey, a day earlier, agreed to a trilateral agreement with the two aspiring NATO users and ended its holdup of Sweden and Finland's software procedure. The alliance is currently assembly in Madrid, and there is a large target on Russia's war in Ukraine, which has lately entered its fifth thirty day period.

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"The accession of Finland and Sweden will make them safer, NATO more powerful, and the Euro-Atlantic location a lot more secure," the alliance explained in a statement. "The safety of Finland and Sweden is of direct great importance to the Alliance, which include all through the accession course of action."

The decision will now go to each of the member states’ parliaments and legislatures for ultimate ratification. NATO leaders stated they assume the system to go rapidly.

"Then we will invite Finland and Sweden to sign up for NATO. And that demonstrates that NATO's door is open up. It demonstrates that President Putin has not succeeded in closing NATO’s doorway," NATO Secretary-Common Jens Stoltenberg claimed in a press meeting alongside President Joe Biden. "He is obtaining the reverse of what he would like. He wishes much less NATO President Putin is having much more NATO by Finland and Sweden becoming a member of our Alliance."

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov described their admittance to the alliance as "destabilizing."

“We take into account the enlargement of NATO a purely destabilizing element in global affairs,” Russian Deputy International Minister Sergei Ryabkov claimed, according to a report by Ria Novosti, a Russian state news company. "This does not incorporate security, neither to individuals who broaden and who are amongst the joiners, nor to other countries that understand the alliance as a risk."

Russia has usually criticized NATO's enlargement east toward its borders, but the war in Ukraine has unintentionally united NATO allies and brought the alliance nearer to Moscow's territory.

Turkey threatens US allies and companions as Ukraine war gives Erdogan leverage

Joel Gehrke

June 09, 07:00 AM June 09, 07:00 AM

Turkey could soon start a new army procedure in opposition to the Kurdish forces that partnered with the United States to dismantle the Islamic Point out team in Syria in spite of protests from American officials.

“We are fully unstinting in our initiatives with the Turkish govt to back them off on this sick-considered venture,” Condition Office Assistant Secretary Barbara Leaf explained to the Senate Overseas Relations Committee all through a Wednesday hearing. “I couldn’t give you the assurance that they are heading to.”

A cross-border assault could upend the U.S. solution to suppressing IS and potentially even travel the most vital American husband or wife in the region into an alliance with Syrian President Bashar Assad, American leaders worry. However Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who regards the Syrian fighters as terrorist allies of the Kurdish separatist group that has fought the Turkish central govt for many years, looks keen to push disputes with the U.S. and other NATO customers at a minute when the war in Ukraine has shown Erdogan’s clout inside the trans-Atlantic alliance — as evidenced by his Wednesday accusation that the U.S. and Greece have established military services bases focusing on Turkey.

“Nine American bases — wherever have these bases been established? In Greece,” Erdogan advised reporters, for each a Turkish public broadcaster’s interpreter. “And towards whom? They solution ‘against Russia,’ but we will not invest in into that. Sorry, but no.”

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Erdogan produced that comment alongside Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro, who is traveling to Ankara following President Joe Biden banned him and other Latin American authoritarians from attending the Summit of the Americas this 7 days in Los Angeles. His press conference renewed some of the most fractious controversies of Erdogan’s romance with the relaxation of the trans-Atlantic alliance, as he reiterated his accusation that Sweden and Finland, who have used to be part of NATO, give shelter to Kurdish terrorists.

“What we knowledgeable with Greece, what we expert with France, we do not want to experience the exact with them,” Erdogan explained.

Greece and Turkey have a fraught history in spite of their mutual membership in NATO. They entered the alliance alongside one another in 1952 during the Chilly War, but the modern-day point out of Greece fought a war of independence from the Ottoman Empire, which preceded the Republic of Turkey, in the early 19th century that succeeded in element because of to the interventions of Good Britain, France, and Russia.

French President Emmanuel Macron arrived to Greece’s assist in 2020 just after Turkish and Greek forces almost came to blows through a dispute about electrical power exploration legal rights in the Mediterranean. Turkey reportedly responded by employing a chopping-edge Russian anti-plane missile technique, ordered in defiance of U.S. sanctions legislation, to track F-16 fighter jets flown by France, Greece, and Italy throughout a joint military exercising with the United Arab Emirates. More not too long ago, Turkey has accused Greece of militarizing critical islands in the Aegean Sea in violation of intercontinental agreements.

“Greece should really disarm these islands. If not, the sovereignty of these islands will be open up to dialogue.” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu stated Tuesday, for each Turkish media, in an clear danger. “That’s what we obviously notify Greece.”

Greek Key Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis managed that the two sides are “still very far” from the intensity that their disputes reached in 2020.

“Today, anyone wants to show restraint,” Mitsotakis stated Tuesday, “especially at a time when we are experiencing a extremely huge problem at NATO with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We will have to be united.”

That invasion has galvanized the alliance and democratic allies in Europe, even spurring Sweden and Finland to abandon their historic posture of neutrality between Moscow and the capitals of NATO. Russia threatened retaliation for this kind of a transfer throughout the Nordic states’ inner debates more than the application course of action, but Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson countered that embattled Russian forces are much too “occupied in Ukraine” to interdict their motion into the alliance — leaving Erdogan’s veto risk standing as the biggest impediment to their membership.

“NATO is an corporation of safety. NATO is not an business that would pave the way for terror,” Erdogan stated. “As prolonged as these terror groups do operate rampant in Sweden — and even in their own parliaments, there are terrorists — as prolonged as these terrorists are in their parliaments and as very long as these terror groups on the streets of Stockholm make demonstrations ... and as very long as interviews with terrorist leaders are broadcast on national TVs, we are unable to notify them, 'Go forward and join NATO, and continue on as these types of.'”

Erdogan appeared to be referring to Swedish lawmaker Amineh Kakabaveh, an Iranian Kurd who joined a Kurdish militia as a teenager all through the Iran-Iraq War in advance of fleeing to Europe. Now a political independent and selecting vote in Sweden’s divided parliament, Kakabaveh remains a supporter of Kurdish groups in Syria and rejects Erdogan’s allegation that those people militias, the Syrian Democratic Forces and the YPG, are terrorists. The Swedish primary minister’s celebration endorsed Kakabaveh’s placement on the Syrian Kurds in November as portion of its hard work to secure a governing majority.

“That flexibility fighters who fought or sympathize with YPG or [the Democratic Union Party] are classed by selected state actors as terrorists is unacceptable. ... The Social Democrats intend to deepen their cooperation with the [the Democratic Union Party],” the Swedish politicians agreed, as the Financial Situations observed.

Erdogan tends to make no difference among these teams and the PKK, a militant firm of Turkish Kurds that the U.S. and other countries have selected a overseas terrorist corporation for many years. He wishes to push the Syrian Kurdish forces back from the Turkish border — as he tried to do in 2019. And the SDF, an umbrella team of Kurdish and Arab militias, has said it would partner with Assad to fend off the Turkish assault if Erdogan carries out his risk.

“The assembly verified the readiness of [SDF] forces to coordinate with forces of the Damascus governing administration to confront any probable Turkish incursion and to defend Syrian territories in opposition to profession,” the team mentioned Tuesday.

These kinds of a conflict could make it harder for individuals forces to manage custody of hundreds of IS militants that they are holding in northeast Syrian prisons. IS fighters carried out a big attack to consider a person of those prisons in January.

“Any enterprise, any armed forces procedure across the border into northern Syria, to start with and foremost puts the civilian populace in the crosshairs, and next, [it] severely places at threat a essential mission that the global D-ISIS coalition, the U.S., is endeavor,” Leaf, the Condition Department’s lead official for the In close proximity to East bureau, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Wednesday. “And, obviously, it places into the crosshairs our own associates in that mission.”